Living Our Dream

Branson, MO Part I: Branson Landing

After leaving the Omaha area, we drove south on I-29 through Kansas City, MO. Then we headed east a short distance on I-70 before turning south again on U. S. Route 65. It was a long drive of over 5 hours to Sedalia, MO, where we stopped for one night at Countryside Senior and Adult RV Park.

Countryside RV has mostly back-ins, but they have about half a dozen pull-throughs they reserve for those staying only one night. The campground is all gravel and they have full hookups with 30/50-amp electric plus cable. There is a little traffic noise from U. S. Route 65 that passes the campground; but unlike an interstate, traffic dwindles to almost nothing at night. The sites are a little close, but the campground wasn't anywhere near full. It was a great place for a one or two-night stop. The photo below shows our site at Countryside Senior RV.

 

From Sedalia, we had about a three-hour drive to Hollister, MO, which is just south of Branson. Hollister is the location of Escapees Turkey Creek RV Village where we planned to spend a couple of weeks to chill out and to let our budget recover a bit. Turkey Creek, like other Escapees campgrounds, has low daily and weekly rates for Escapees members. We spent the entire spring and summer in tourist areas where most of the campgrounds were pretty expensive. 

Turkey Creek has gravel roads and pads, paved patios, and grass between the sites. There are full hookups with 50-amp electric available at some sites, and they also have free Wi-Fi and cable. Some of the sites and roads are a little tight, especially in the area of the park where our site was located. The photo below shows our site at Turkey Creek.

There is a little daytime traffic noise from Business Route 65 that passes the campground. We could also hear occasional trains rumbling by on the other side of Turkey Creek, but we seldom heard their horns even though there is a crossing nearby in Hollister.

We arrived in Branson a few days before Labor Day weekend. We were just in time to catch up with some friends from back in Pittsburgh who retired to Branson two years ago. We got to visit with them before they took off on a nine-day motorcycle trip to Gatlinburg, TN.

We stayed at Turkey Creek and visited Branson our first year of full-timing. Branson, of course, is known for its family-oriented entertainment and shows. We found out the period after Labor Day is a slow time for Branson. Some of the shows close down or go on a reduced schedule for a while until some of the bus tours start later in October. That was fine with us because traffic was also greatly reduced after the Labor Day weekend.

Speaking of traffic...when we were the area three years ago, any time we wanted to travel in or around Branson, we had to drive right through town which is generally bumper to bumper most any time of the day. There was also road construction that made reaching SR 65 to by-pass downtown an even bigger nightmare. However, with that construction completed, it has become very easy to reach northern Branson (the new Super Walmart to be more specific) by zipping up the limited access, 4-lane road...and by golly there's a Kohl's, Target, Home Depot, and Michael's up there, too!

Branson is named for Ruben Branson, who opened a general store and post office in the area in 1892. The city was officially incorporated in 1912 when the Powersite Dam across the White River was completed downstream of Branson in nearby Forsythe, MO. The dam formed Lake Taneycomo, which is named for the county in which it is located - Taney County, MO. Lake Taneycomo is long and narrow and is really more like a widened section of the river than a lake.

After the holiday weekend, we stopped at Branson Landing, which is located on the waterfront along Lake Taneycomo. Branson Landing was opened in 2006 and is a retail shopping area that is anchored by Bass Pro Shop on one end and Belk's at the other end with numerous smaller shops in between. There is something for everyone.

The landing is also the departure point for cruises of Lake Taneycomo on either the 100-foot luxury yacht the Landing Princess...

 

...or the paddleboat replica the Lake Queen.

 

The other big attraction at Branson Landing is the $7.5 million fountain that features hourly shows of water, fire, and lights (at night) that dance and pulse in time to music.

 

The next photo is another view from the upper terrace overlooking the fountain.

The terraces are planted with colorful annuals and provide an attractive view from the restaurants, condos, and hotel surrounding the central square of Branson Landing.

As we said, Branson is known for its family-oriented shows. In 1959, the Baldknobbers Jamboree opened their show in Branson. In the same year, the theme park Silver Dollar City opened, followed by the outdoor drama "Shepherd of the Hills." At that time, most people went to Branson to fish, and the shows gave them something to do in the evenings. By the 1960s, there were several more shows, and a number of them began to relocate along Highway 76, which came to be known as "The Strip." The growth in the number of shows in Branson that transformed it into a major tourist attraction took place in the 1980s. Incidentally, the Baldknobbers are still performing, the "Shepherd of the Hills" drama is still being presented, and Silver Dollar City theme park is bigger than ever with over 1 million visitors a year.

Branson has some very good shows, so we decided we wanted to see at least one while we were there. We'll tell you about it in our next post.

Three Years and Counting

July 10, 2009 marks the 3^rd anniversary of our full-time RVing lifestyle. We had initially made a two-year commitment to full-timing, and so it is natural that we would re-evaluate our lifestyle on succeeding anniversaries.

Being retired and having more discretionary time doesn’t make life go any slower. In fact, for us it seems to be going faster. We heard recently that life is like a roll of toilet paper…the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes!

Probably most notable for us is how comfortable we have become with our nomadic life. Getting mail, scheduling maintenance on the vehicles, getting prescriptions refilled, paying bills, getting hair cuts, finding a chiropractor or veterinarian…all of these things we take in our stride. Sure, we have unexpected things happen, but we try to take those in stride, too. Our gratitude for this incredible opportunity continues to abound, and we continue to be amazed at the beauty and diversity of this country and its people.

 After 1½ years of traveling with new knees, Margery feels like she just started full-timing and isn’t ready yet to consider landing someplace.  There are still places we both want to re-visit, particularly in Texas, New Mexico, and southern Utah; and we haven’t yet made it to Michigan, Wisconsin, and New England.

Paul recently mentioned his desire to garden again and occasionally entertains thoughts of settling down at some point. That probably won’t be until at least the five-year mark, and then it’s likely it would only be for part of the year.

 “Settling down” for us would likely be having a place somewhere in the south for part of the year (late fall and winter) and traveling the rest of the time. And, of course, that still presents the problems of being an absentee resident of a permanent residence. However, with the tanking of our economy and its uncertainty in the future, we’re not sure that we would have enough resources to maintain both a permanent residence and the motor home.

Our other option would be to extend our stays in our RV in one location up to 5 or 6 months at a time and travel the rest of the year. This will probably be our transition avenue since it would provide the best of both worlds.

We stayed at the Escapees Resort Co-op in Wauchula, FL, for a week last December, and we liked it. You are permitted to do landscaping with approval, and that might satisfy Paul’s desire to garden again. The photo below shows our site last December at Wauchula.

With an eye on the future, we did put a deposit down to put ourselves on the waiting list for a lot in the Escapees Resort Co-op. This could be an ideal situation. The cost to buy into the co-op is fairly reasonable and so are annual dues; and what makes this option so appealing is that if and when we choose to leave the co-op, we will get our initial investment back in full. Since there is a waiting list, there is little risk of not being able to find someone who wants our spot when we're ready to give it up. The waiting list is quite long; and it could take 8 to 10 years to get to the top of the list, so we'll have plenty of time to decide if this option will work for us. The other good thing is if we change our mind before our name comes up, we get our deposit back in full.

We could also just extend our stay a little longer at Blueberry Hill in Bushnell, FL, where we have been spending three or four months the past two winters and where we will spend this coming winter. Paul wouldn't be able to garden, but there is no long-term commitment. We like the location because it is very convenient to a lot of things in central Florida. The next photo shows our site last winter in Bushnell.

Unfortunately, it’s hard on a motor home to remain stationary for extended periods of time. The engine and running gear should be exercised periodically. When we first started researching this lifestyle, we thought we would trade the motor home for a fifth wheel when we started slowing down. A fifth wheel would be a better semi-stationary unit, but the economy is not good for selling or trading RVs.

So you can see we’ve been evaluating what our options might be. However, for the foreseeable future, we will be continuing and enjoying our full-timing lifestyle. As we said, there are still some locations where we want to return, and there are some places we haven't even been yet. We also have our favorite places where we would like to spend extended periods of time, i.e. the Mobile area in Alabama and the Dayton area and Amish country in Ohio to name just a few.

After slowing down our second year, we have consciously set a fairly ambitious travel schedule for ourselves this summer. That is partly due to Margery's feeling we are starting over with her new knees, but it is mostly due to the fact we are traveling such a long distance all the way to the California coast and to the Pacific Northwest; and we want to see as much on this trip as possible.

There were record high fuel prices in 2008. We withstood that pretty well, but we feel the prices are more reasonable now only because of the poor economy and are destined to rise again. In fact, fuel prices have already increased considerably from their lows of several months ago.

Because of more reasonable short-term fuel prices and uncertainty about the future of the economy, we decided since we were going all the way to the west coast, we better see as much as we can now because we don't know when or if we will ever get that far west again.

We are definitely in “vacation mode,”  having already traveled over 4,000 miles since we left Florida in the middle of April. We recently arrived in Washington State, and we still have to tour Washington and to travel back east by fall. We’re having a wonderful time, but have to admit we’re looking forward to slowing down on our return to the east.

Our average nightly camping costs are increasing, partly because we are staying in the same place for shorter periods, but mostly because we are staying in expensive tourist areas. California was quite expensive. It was there we stayed at a campground that charged $70 a night, which the highest we have ever spent. We are also staying at more full-hookup campgrounds and fewer state parks and Corps of Engineers campgrounds. Because we are out sightseeing almost every day, we find it much more convenient to have full hookups. For one thing, that enables us to do laundry at the motor home in the evening instead of having to find and then sit around a laundromat.

It seems that most full-time or extended-time RVers usually have a “theme” to their time on the road, i.e. following the Lewis & Clark Trail, visiting all the state capitols, or visiting Civil War battlefields.  We have developed our own set of interests which include natural wonders such as those found in our national parks. Even though neither one of us could stand history back in high school, we now both find it fascinating. History really comes to life if you can experience the historic places first hand. We also like gardens, waterfalls, and factory tours. We recently began visiting a number of restaurants featured on the Food Network program Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. That's fun, but hard on the waistline.

So as we embark on our fourth year on the road, we find we are pleased with the decisions we have made that have brought us to this point. Downsizing continues to be a liberating lifestyle and a sound economic principle in these uncertain times. We look forward to revisiting some favorite areas and exploring new ones. 

Grand Canyon to Yosemite

We left the Grand Canyon and drove south to Williams, AZ, then turned west on I-40. We scheduled our usual four-hour drive, which took us to Desert View RV Resort in Needles, CA. Desert View is a very nice campground. They have regular and long back-in sites as well as regular and long pull-throughs. We only stayed one night so we got a long pull-through so we wouldn't have to unhook the toad. The photo below shows our site at Desert View RV.

The landscaping at Desert View is beautiful. The row of palm trees along the front of the campground has lights on them at night. The photo below is the flower of an exotic-looking shrub that was growing on several of the corner sites.

The entrance driveway is lined with large, white oleander and the sites have pink oleander between them for added privacy. The next photo is a close-up of one of the oleander flowers at our site. The delicate flowers and the waxy, green foliage look great.

 

Desert View is a winter snowbird campground, although winters aren't as warm as some of the more popular snowbird roosts. It is close to Lake Havasu and Parker, AZ, and Laughlin, NV, which are also snowbird locations.

There is plenty of gravel on the roads and the sites, and the gravel is fresh and clean. There are paved patios. Desert view has full hook-ups and Wi-fi. We were glad they also had 50 amp electric because it was 104 degrees when we arrived.

We left Needles the next morning and continued on I-40 to a campground called A Country RV Park in Bakersfield, CA. A Country RV has full hook-ups including cable and Wi-fi. The next photo shows our site.

We were again happy to have 50 amp electric even though it was only 100 degrees in Bakersfield. The site spacing isn't bad for a private campground. Most sites are pull-throughs, but there are some back-ins around the perimeter. The wide internal roads are paved. Some sites are also paved, but some are fine gravel. We had a paved site. Some sites, like ours, had gravel between, and some sites had grass.

Again, having a pull-through meant we didn't have to unhook because we left the next morning for the Escapees Park of the Sierras in Coursegold, CA, about 30 miles from the south entrance to Yosemite National Park. We normally don't travel two days in a row, but we wanted to get to Yosemite so we would have time to get most of our sightseeing in before the busy Memorial Day weekend.

We followed California Route 99 for almost 100 miles from Bakersfield to Fresno. For almost the entire distance, the center median was planted with pink, red, and white oleander. It helped make for a pleasant drive.

One reason oleander is planted along highways is that it is very drought tolerant. The other reason is deer will not eat it because it is highly toxic.

We arrived at Park of the Sierras, an Escapees co-op park, around lunch time. In the Escapees co-op parks, co-op members who are not using their site can put it into the rental pool for use by other Escapees members who are visiting the area. The photo below shows our site at Park of the Sierras.

We knew Park of the Sierras had a lot of trees and that getting satellite reception would be a challenge. They showed us the two available sites they thought might give us the best chance, and we picked the one that had the fewest trees.

The location here in California was a lot farther south and west than we are used to, and Paul mis-judged where the satellite would be. When we tried to get our dish to lock onto a signal, Paul realized there was one tall tree on the site next to us that was in the way. However, after repositioning the motor home several times, we finally ended up with good satellite reception.

Park of the Sierras is very quiet. It has full hook-ups plus cable. Wi-fi is available at the office, but they are in the process of making it available throughout the park. The sites are gravel, and most have paved patios. Many of the co-op members have done extensive landscaping.

 

One plant we saw a lot of was a small shrub with gray-green leaves and smooth, reddish-brown bark. They were all around our site, all over the campground, and we later saw them all over Yosemite. Paul did some research and found out they are called manzanita, which means "little apple" in Spanish. The photo below shows a manzanita shrub.

 

Paul particularly liked the smooth, red bark shown in the closeup below.

 

There are about 60 species of manzanita ranging from low-growing varieties to a variety that grows up to 20 feet tall. The shrubs grow in western North America all the way from southern Canada to northern Mexico. The berries, which are shown in the photo below, can be soaked in water to make a tea, or they can be dried and ground into a coarse meal.

 

The Escapees park in Coarsegold has one of the most unique layouts we have seen in a campground. It is built on a hillside, and the roads twist and turn up, down, and around the hills. It reminded us of the roads and residential neighborhoods in our old hometown of Pittsburgh. The photo below shows a typical park road. The terrain looks flat in the photo, but it was uphill.

 

Our plan while in Coarsegold was to visit Yosemite National Park, which is located about 30 miles up the road. We investigated staying in the national park, but Yosemite has no hook-ups in any of their 13 campgrounds. They say they have numerous sites for RVs up to 35 feet, but there are only 12 sites in two campgrounds suitable for RVs up to 40 feet long (our motor home is 37 feet). Part of the problem is site length and part of the problem is having enough room to swing to back in.

On top of all that, reservations can be made up to five months in advance and most reservable sites for April through September are gone within minutes of when they first become available. Therefore, we decided to stay at the Escapees park and make the rather long drive each of the several days we would be going into the national park. We'll tell you all about our visits to Yosemite in the next few posts.

Mobile, AL Part I: Shrimp and More

After spending four full months in Florida (with the exception of taking three trips to Pittsburgh with a duration of about ten days each), we headed north and west to begin our summer travel adventure. Our primary destination this year will be Yosemite National Park in California, but we will make a number of other stops on the way there. Afterward, we plan to visit northern California, Oregon, and Washington before heading back east for fall and winter.

After we left Bushnell, we made an overnight stop at Chattahoochee RV Resort in Chattahoochee, FL. We stayed at this campground, which is located right along the Apalachicola River, our first year of full-timing. The campground is located just downstream of a dam that forms Lake Seminole. The city of Chattahoochee operates the campground and honors a 50% Passport America discount for stays of up to three days. There is also a picnic and boat launch area adjacent to the campground.

The use of the word "resort" in the name may be a little too hopeful, but it is still a fairly nice campground - especially at a Passport America price of about $8 a night. The photo below shows our site at Chattahoochee RV Resort.

 

If you go to this campground, make sure you use a pressure regulator because their water pressure is very high. Without a regulator, the pressure pegged our 100 psi gauge.

The main road in the campground is paved, but the rest of the roads are gravel. Some sites are gravel, but the ones down over the hill near the river are grass. The sites are all back-ins; but the last time we were there, they let us park down over the hill and just pull across several unoccupied sites so we wouldn't have to unhook the toad for a one-night stop. This year, since they again weren't very filled, we did the same thing except we were at the far end of the upper section of the campground. The sites near the river were still a bit soggy because they had been underwater until a few days prior.

Northern Florida and Georgia have had quite a bit of rain lately. There have been a series of heavy storms passing through for the past few weeks. A storm gave Chattahoochee over four inches of rain the day before we arrived. After we got set up, we walked down to the boat launch and picnic area where we could see the water was still pretty high.

From Chattahoochee, it was on to Rainbow Plantation, the Escapees RV Park in Summerdale, AL, near Mobile. Rainbow Plantation has a transient camping area, leased/co-op sites, and deeded lots. The photo below shows our site in the camping area.

We also stayed at Rainbow Plantation our first year of full-timing; but it was fairly cool because it was the end of December so we didn't stay long and we didn't do any sightseeing. Summerdale is located on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, and the city of Mobile is located on the western side of the bay.

One of the things Mobile Bay is known for is seafood. We did a little research online and decided on a restaurant not too far from Summerdale called Big Daddy's Grill, which is located on the Fish River. Big Daddy's is shown in the photo below.

Big Daddy's has live entertainment on weekends, but it bills itself as a family restaurant. The entertainment usually runs from 3 or 4 in the afternoon until 7 or 8 in the evening instead of late into the night. They even have a couple of piles of sand for the kids to play in. There is indoor seating, outdoor seating in the pavilion shown above where there is a huge fireplace for cool evenings, and outdoor seating behind the restaurant overlooking a small marina. Although is was a weekday when we were there and there was no activity to watch at the marina, we chose a picnic table overlooking the water.

 

Margery had a catfish strip basket and Paul had a fried shrimp basket with local shrimp. Both were excellent. The baskets come with hush puppies, slaw, and a choice of fries or onion rings.

Another thing that showed up in our research for seafood was the fact that the Annual Shrimp Cook-off would be held in Mobile the Saturday we were in town. The cook-off is a fund raiser for an organization called Volunteer Mobile, which seeks to promote volunteerism to solve community problems such as disaster relief.

The admission price to the cook-off is a little steep at $15 per person; but it is for a good cause, and it entitles you to all the shrimp you can eat at no additional charge. Advance purchase discount tickets are available at some of the area banks, but the branches on the Summerdale side of the bay didn't have the tickets because they said they were too far from downtown Mobile.

The Organized Seafood Association of Alabama provides all the shrimp for the cook-off at no cost. The contestants, which are made up of professionals such as area restaurants and amateur teams such as civic groups, submit their dishes for judging. The winners in both the professional and amateur categories receive bragging rights. The teams also serve samples of their dishes to the public.

The event is held in Bienville Square, which is a pleasant, shady park that covers one square block in the downtown area of Mobile.

 

The cook-off runs from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM. We arrived around 11:30, and some of the booths already have fairly long lines. We developed a system where one of us would stand in one of the longer lines line while the other would walk to one of the nearby, shorter lines and bring two samples back to where the other was waiting. The photo below shows Margery enjoying one of our favorite dishes of the entire cook-off - shrimp in an Alfredo-style cheese sauce. We liked that one so well, Margery went back three times and Paul went back four times.

 

The shrimp cook-off had live entertainment that included a band that sounded pretty good. Miss Seafood, the event queen, and several pre-teen members of her court also sang. They were quite talented.

 

We had fried shrimp, peel-and-eat-shrimp with old bay seasoning, shrimp with pine nuts, shrimp with rice, barbecued shrimp, grilled shrimp wrapped in prosciutto, oriental shrimp, and our favorite shrimp in cheese sauce. By about 12:30, most of the lines were getting quite long, but that was OK with us because we were getting pretty full. We had another sample or two and left a little after 1:00.

Since it was still early in the day and since we were already downtown, we decided to drive several blocks to the Mobile Carnival Museum. Carnival is another name for Mardi Gras. The Mobile Carnival Museum is shown in the photo below.

When someone mentions Mardi Gras, we always think of New Orleans. The celebration in New Orleans is more well known than the one in Mobile because New Orleans publicizes theirs more. Carnival in Mobile bills itself as being more family oriented which may also help account for the greater notoriety of the celebration held in New Orleans.

Mobile claims to have the oldest Mardi Gras or Carnival celebration in what would eventually become the United States dating back to 1703. Mardi Gras literally means "fat Tuesday" in French. It is a celebration prior to Lent when supplies of fat and other foods that the pious would traditionally forgo during Lent are used up. Parades and masquerading typically associated with Mardi Gras and Carnival can be traced back to medieval Italy.

Carnival in Mobile is centered around mystic societies (called krewes in New Orleans and other locations) that sponsor parades, balls, and other activities for members, guests, and the public. The mystic societies are private organizations that grew out of the social and business structure that cotton brought to the city. There are approximately 55 active social societies today. Membership in a society is by invitation only.

The king and queen of Carnival are selected almost a year in advance. The selection is made based on social standing, connections, and money. The king and queen don't necessarily need to be residents of Mobile, but they must have a connection to the city. For example, one past queen was a New York opera star, but her mother was a resident of Mobile.

The debutantes of the season serve as Ladies of the Court. Each lady selects her escort. The societies kick off the season in Mobile with a formal debutante ball held Thanksgiving weekend.

The societies also select their own kings and queens who wear elaborate costumes that include ornate trains to some of the events. The Carnival Museum has many of these beautiful costumes and trains on display, some of which are shown in the photo below.



The photo below shows the trains and costumes of the 2008 Mobile Carnival Association king and queen.



The next photo shows the costumes of the 2008 Mobile Mardi Gras Association (formerly the Colored Carnival Association) king and queen.



The gown and train shown in the photo below are from 1936. Although this train is very elegant, you can see how much more elaborate the trains have become today.

 

Children's page costumes are shown in the next photo. The job of the pages is to look cute and stay out of mischief.

The importance of the king and queen having financial resources can't be overstated. All of the dresses, robes, crowns, scepters, and men's costumes are paid for by the families. Each train is designed to include symbols which are meaningful to the wearer. The embellishments are all hand-sewn and the costumes take many months to complete.

The museum also has portions of a couple of parade floats on display. The floats are made from paper mache. The photo below shows us pretending to ride on a float and to throw Mardi Gras beads.



The next photo shows a decoration from another float on display in the museum gift shop.



And finally, here we are posing as King Felix III and Queen Margery. All Carnival kings in Mobile are traditionally named Felix, and since the current Carnival Association is the third embodiment of the ruling organization, the king is called Felix III. The queen gets to use her own name. We can't seem to pass up those tourist cutouts and statues that you stick your faces through for photos.



It was a fun and interesting day, but there is more to see in Mobile. Look for our next post in a few days.

St. Petersburg, FL

After our short stay in Bonita Springs, we moved about 100 miles north to the Escapees co-op park called The Florida SKP Resort in Wauchula, FL, west of Sebring in the south central part of Florida. Actually, the Resort is located in Zolfo Springs, but the mailing address is Wauchula.

The Escapees RV Club has numerous camping facilities across the country. Some are campgrounds only, and some are co-ops. Co-ops are described on the  Escapees Website. Descriptions of the other types of parks are available by clicking on the appropriate name in the sidebar on the site. 

The photo below shows our site at the SKP Resort.

 

The Florida SKP Resort is a co-op rather than a campground, meaning co-op members buy a share of the co-op and pay an annual maintenance fee in order to be able to use a site. If you decide you no longer want to be a member of the co-op, you get your buy-in fee back plus the cost of any approved improvements you have made to the site. There is a long waiting list to buy into the co-op, so there is little danger of not being able to recover your costs.

Some co-op members choose to put park models on their sites and some use their sites for their RVs. Those who use their sites for RVs can choose to put their sites into the rental pool during times when they are not using their sites themselves. Those of us Escapees members who are not co-op members can then use the rental sites.

There are a limited number of rental sites and the number drops when more co-op members arrive for the winter (January and February are the busiest months). We intentionally went before the seasonal rush, and there were quite a few open sites.

Site sizes at the Resort are very generous and the landscaping is nicely done. There are a lot of palm trees along the campground roads and most of the individual sites have also had shrubs and flowers added. The Resort has full hookups, free Wi-Fi, paved roads, and most rental sites have paved pads and patios.

While we were staying at the Resort, we went to St. Petersburg, which is about an hour to the west, to visit Sunken Gardens. Sunken Gardens is another one of those places Paul visited with his family when he was a kid.

Sunken Gardens is over 100 years old. It was started in 1903 by plumber and avid gardener George Turner, Sr. The gardens are built in a 10 to 15 foot deep sink hole, hence the name "sunken." George planted quite a few citrus trees, papayas, and other exotic plants around his home. In the '20s he opened a nursery and began selling fruits, vegetables, and plants. His nursery customers paid a nickel to tour the gardens. In 1935, George fenced the garden and began a charging 25-cent admission fee. In the '50s through the '70s, Sunken Gardens became a popular tourist attraction.

To get to Sunken Gardens, we had to drive over Sunshine Skyway, which crosses Tampa Bay. At 5.5 miles long, the bridge is the world's longest bridge with a cable-stayed main span. The main span of the bridge is shown in the photo below.

The yellow suspension cables and their shadows create interesting patterns.

 

The original two-lane bridge that was part of the Sunshine Skyway was opened in 1954. This was the bridge Paul and his family crossed when they were here in the late '50s. A second bridge that ran parallel to the first was added in 1969 to make the road four lanes wide. The span that was added in 1969 was destroyed in 1980 when a freighter struck a bridge pier. The bridge, a Greyhound bus, and several cars fell 150 feet into the bay. The replacement twin spans that exist today were opened in 1987.

When we arrived at Sunken Gardens, Paul was surprised at how much the area had grown up from what he remembered from when he was a kid. Although it's not right downtown, the garden is in the city. The photo below shows a portion of the well-landscaped parking lot looking toward the entrance building.

The next photo shows the small waterfall and colorful foliage that greeted us as we entered the garden.

Sunken Gardens covers about four acres; but with the way the paths wind around, it feels like it is much larger. The mature, dense foliage does a good job of hiding other paths that may only be a few yards away from the path you are on. For the next photo, the shade from the mature trees was so dense we had to use a flash so you could see our faces. You can also see how thick the growth is behind us.

Throughout the gardens, there are many beautiful, exotic flowers blooming like the one below.

Another flowering shrub that caught our eye was this double hibiscus.

There were also several cages of exotic birds including a couple of different types of parrots and a laughing kookaburra. The laughing kookaburra is a bird from the kingfisher family whose call sounds similar to human laughter. The call of the kookaburra is familiar to most of us because it has found its way into many so many soundtracks that it has come to typify a jungle sound. The kookaburra wasn't calling when we were there, but one of the parrots was. It really did add to the jungle atmosphere.

There was a larger cage with several brightly-colored macaws, which are a type of parrot from Mexico, Central, and South America. Two of the macaws were preening each other. It looked like the one on the left was saying, "Down a bit, a little lower...now over to the left...that's it...ahhhh."

 

Sunken Gardens also has several Chilean flamingos. Most of them were resting with their heads tucked behind their wings, but the one in the photo below was preening itself. We had never seen a bird kneeling this way.

Although poinsettias make most of us think of Christmas and cold weather, they are actually indigenous to Mexico and are tropical in nature. Sunken Gardens had these beautiful poinsettias displayed in the shape of a Christmas tree.

As we finished our tour of Sunken Gardens, we couldn't pass up a tourist photo.

From Sunken Gardens, we drove back across Sunshine Skyway to return to the motor home. During the rest of our stay, we made a Wal-Mart stop or two, did some laundry, and did a little motor home maintenance.

From here, we go to Blueberry Hill RV Resort. Blueberry Hill is in Bushnell, FL, and it is the same place we stayed for several months last winter.